The United Kingdom’s government has announced an investment of $340 million (£180 million) into a GNSS-independent national timing system.
The funding, which has been allocated to the UK National Timing Centre, will be used to develop a system to distribute precise and resilient timing signals free via radio, the internet and a fibre network.
The aim is to reduce the current reliance upon GNSS-based timing signals, which are becoming increasingly vulnerable to disruption via jamming and spoofing, and one day perhaps to direct attack.
The National Timing Centre itself is part of a long-term program to establish enhanced timing resilience for the UK, which includes deploying alternate timing sources and testing and deploying alternate timing signal distribution technologies.
“Accurate timekeeping is about more than just keeping the clocks ticking, it is fundamental to keeping the country running – from banking and staying in touch with friends and family through to our emergency services having the information they need,” said the UK’s Science Minister, Lord Vallance.
“The systems we rely on today are increasingly vulnerable to disruption, which is why we’re acting now to strengthen the infrastructure we rely on every day.
“This project will give us a safety net that will help protect our national security, safeguard our economy, and give people the confidence they need to go about their daily lives.”
Underpinning security
The new funding will support the delivery of the next stage of the NTC program, and will include two dedicated sites equipped with atomic clocks that will share signals via fibre and satellite… providing a terrestrial time source to complement GNSS timing signals.
The NTC is also going to invest in the UK supply chain for essential timing components, and the vital timing skills the NTC needs… with new opportunities to be opened up for graduates, apprentices and, eventually, PhD‑level training.
“This funding ensures the NTC programme can deliver huge benefits to industry and the economy, while underpinning secure applications in the future,” said Peter Thompson, CEO of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the home of the NTC.
The investment comes after the successful completion of an R&D phase undertaken by NPL, which concluded in March 2025.
During that phase, state-of-the-art ground-based facilities and a dedicated software environment were designed, developed and tested to ensure the feasibility of the NTC.
Taking it seriously
Unlike many other countries, the UK is taking its positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) system seriously, with the timing system being the most important of the three elements, as it is the foundation upon which the other two are based.
It has been estimated that a 24-hour GNSS outage could cost the UK economy some £1.4 billion in disruption and lost productivity.
In late 2023, the UK announced a 10-point plan for enhancing PNT resilience, including establishing a National PNT Office and the National Timing Centre, having back-up plans in the event of disruption to the GNSS, and other initiatives such as terrestrial timing networks and atomic clock research to boost security and reduce risk.
Australia has no such national plan, although the Department of Defence is working on establishing its own timing system. The recently released ANCHOR report outlines Australia’s vulnerabilities and the steps that could be taken to ameliorate them.
And a $100 million bid is about to be submitted to the federal government for the establishment of a Co-operative Research Centre for Secure, Hardened, Integrity-Enhanced, Location and Timing Defence (SHIELD).
